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New study finds low-profile situational factors play a major

role in saving decisions 

 

By Wesley Zeng, News Editor 

Published June 7 6:58PM 
 

As the coronavirus continues to leave millions of Americans unemployed and chipping away at
their savings, the decision to conserve money or continue to spend is becoming more and more
prominent in their minds. Research by multiple scientists documented by ​Science Direct ​has
indicated previously that people are more inclined to spend money when they are happy than
when they are sad. However, a new study has found that when given reminders of a bitter life,
these effects are reversed.

These discoveries were identified through extensive research by four graduates, each from
Shanghai Jiao Tong University, University of Texas at Arlington, The Chinese University of
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Hong Kong, and University of Minnesota. “[The] five studies provided converging evidence of
the interactive effects of bitter taste and mood on the disposition to spend or save money,” says
Fengyan Cai, one of the researchers. Cai explains that the initial hypotheses pose a theory that
people who were happy would decide to save after a bitter drink while unhappy people would
decide to spend; the opposite of their instinctual mindest. The group decided to run five
experiments to test the different approaches a bitter life could be portrayed and further back up
results from previous trials.

Their first experiment showed that priming semantic concepts associated with a bitter life
increased happy participants' probability to save money but decreased unhappy participants' want
to do so. The team then tested out the theory with participants actually tasting a bitter drink,
finding similar effects. After the three studies, the team decided to test two follow-up field
studies. From this the graduates “found that tasting a bitter beverage can decrease happy
consumers' impulsive buying (an indication of their inclination to spend money rather than to
save it) in an actual shopping situation,” says Xu. Finally, the researchers fifth experiment found
that drinking a bitter beverage would, on average, increase happy participants’ real saving
behavior.

These findings explain that mood does play an important role in the effect of taste. “In situations
where individuals have not had a negative consumption experience before they make a savings
decision, they are less inclined to save money when they are happy than when they are sad,” says
Yang. People are likely to base their decision to save or spend on their mood at the moment
without considering other scenarios in the future. The team explains that this means happy
people, who currently deem their lives unproblematic will be more willing to spend money than
unhappy individuals, who are more cautious and thus inclined to save.

Their research has been published in the ​Journal of Experimental Social Psychology​ in 2017 and
has been cited eight times for further expansion on their findings.
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Wesley Zeng

Allison Bocchino

Writing 2

8 June 2020

Genre Translation: Metacognition

Writing is a difficult task, as it includes a variety of rules and guidelines to follow. This

becomes much harder when writing for specific genres. Each genre has its own writing

conventions for their academic communities, and therefore have characteristics about them that

define what type of writing it is. Understanding the rules in each discourse community allows

people to better understand how to write in an array of situations. Examples of these genres that

people write include research papers and news articles. After analyzing and breaking down the

research paper into its components, I was able to translate it into a news article using the various

characteristics I found about what makes a news article.

The academic article titled, “The interactive effects of bitter flavor and mood on the

decision to spend or save money,”1 is written as a research paper, helping explain the

experiment, its findings, and its word choice. It is written this way because the whole reason for

the article to be published was to let other readers know that this research has been done. As the

intended audience of research papers are often other peers who would want to use the

researchers’ findings, the research paper is written to primarily explain the idea, process, and

conclusion found from the experiments conducted. This is understood by the format of the entire

paper, as it includes an abstract and introduction before sectioning off the rest of the paper to

1
Cai et al., “The Interactive Effects of Bitter Flavor and Mood on the Decision to Spend or Save Money”, ​Journal
of Experimental Social Psychology,​ vol. 70, 2017, 1
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show the entire process. This helps other researchers easily find what they want to learn from the

paper. Peers are able to look for the correct subheading quickly rather than read through the

entire paper to find the information they wanted. The paper also includes many uses of word

choice and diction within the discourse community it is in, as it has to include many descriptive

words for the procedures and math behind their experiments. This is displayed throughout the

paper, as the writers’ intended audience is other researchers in the same field, which allows the

writers to use specific jargon to explain their studies. Through these genre conventions, the paper

is able to show how the research paper genre is portrayed to readers, and gives me examples of

the differences I should look out for between this genre and news articles.

News articles have much more obvious conventions, but also include many implicit ones.

After reading three news articles, I found some similarities between the three. The first obvious

one is that all news articles include a headline, one that usually gives the main point of the entire

article in a short sentence, as well as a byline, and the date published. This can be seen when you

search up any article from news websites such as the LA Times, CNN, Fox, etc. Another

common convention all news articles include is the use of quotes from people who are tied into

the topic the article is discussing. These were the profound conventions, but there were others

that required more knowledge of the discourse community to understand. The first is that the

quotes are often not used as evidence for commentary as they are in essay writing. Instead, they

are used as a way for the writer to bring new information about the topic, tying in previous ideas

and paving a way for new information, all while providing a sense of credibility to readers. A

hook is another convention in every article that is not noticeable to most readers. News articles

include hooks because it captivates readers by providing interesting information to the audience
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in an expressive way— usually in the first sentence. Finally, I found that articles all answer the

five W’s within the first paragraph. This convention also helps to give a briefing to readers

before more content about the issue.

After understanding the unique conventions and comparing the differences between the

two genres, I was able to break down the conventions found in the primary text and use the

information left to create my secondary text. As I had already previously analyzed and broken

down this text, the major portion of the genre translation was understanding how to rewrite it

into a news article. I looked at all the available information and formatted it into what I thought

would sound most similar to a news article. Next, I reworded certain phrases and left out some

information as it was not deemed necessary for my news article. For example, when performing

the genre translation, I left out the fact that “a psychology professor who was interested in

acquiring information about personal experiences of college students was ostensibly conducting

the first task,”2 when explaining how the first experiment was conducted. Through this process,

I eliminated most of the research paper conventions as I took out the format and organization the

paper had and the experiment section of the paper. After, I adapted every single convention that I

found for news articles. I think my only problem was that I could not include the “when” of the

five W’s in my first paragraph because I wanted the news article to sound as if it was current

news but the study was also done three years ago. I also did not change the genre convention of

how some of the explanations were worded for the research paper because I believe it maintains

the authors’ meaning the best and adds value to the news article as well. As I followed every

convention found in news articles, I did not break any rules. However, I did have to bend a rule.

2
Cai et al., “The Interactive Effects”, 3.
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Quotes are usually from one person, as you obtain them from an interview with that person.

However, as this was a research paper, there was no specific commentary from the paper made

only from one person. As I wanted to still include quotes in my translation, I cited the paper itself

and reference a different individual of the group of researchers each time. This rule is able to be

manipulated because, in context, the authors are the people who wrote the paper and, therefore,

in essence, said whatever is not cited as someone else’s. This would mean that the commentary

they made themselves would be considered quotes, and because each individual contributed to

the entire paper, it is acceptable to say that the quote came from a specific individual because it

helps better showcase the genre I translated the primary text into.

Translating the research paper into a news article did not bring up many concerns because

of how I understood the paper already from our previous assignment and also understood the

characteristics of a news article. This process was especially more fluid with the advice I

received after reading, “Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking)”, by Janet Boyd3. In her essay, she

explains how to write everything concisely and to find the same topics while I’m reading.

Looking for the five W’s was quite helpful because it allowed me to find the main interests to

talk about, as well as highlighting a convention within news article writing. However, a major

concern was the value that would be lost if I were to not include all the information from the

paper into my article. Because the paper is 11 pages long, I believed that it would be quite

difficult to condense and adding all the information into my news article would make readers

lose sight of the reason behind why this is relevant and important to the intended audience. As

news is read by anyone who is curious about the topic, most of the population would want to

3
Janet Boyd, “Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking)”, (​Parlor Press, 2011)​ 90.
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read about a new finding that talks about how they save their money. Realizing this, I gathered

the most important parts of the paper using the methods taught by Karen Rosenberg in her essay,

“​Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources”4. She explains how to look at a

research paper and find the important information without reading the entire article. Keeping this

in mind, I ​did not include the main meat of the paper— the experiments— as it is geared towards

the intended audience of the primary text but not the secondary text. Including that information

in the news article would discredit the intended purpose of news articles to inform readers of

news in a concise manner.

With prior knowledge from four years of writing newspaper articles in my journalism

class, the genre translation from my primary text to secondary text was not difficult. Despite this,

I understood the challenges that came into play such as which conventions to keep and how to

best maintain the original meaning of the primary text in this new genre. After translating the

primary text, I now have a better grasp of how writing conventions are how writing goes from

some related sentences to multivariable types of readings.

4
Karen Rosenberg, “Reading Games: ​Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources​”, (​Parlor Press, 2011) 2​ 12
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References

Boyd, Janet. “Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking).” In ​Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing​,

2:87–101. Parlor Press, 2011.

Cai, Fengyan, et al. “The Interactive Effects of Bitter Flavor and Mood on the Decision to

Spend or Save Money.” ​Journal of Experimental Social Psychology​, vol. 70, May 2017,

pp. 48–58., doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2016.12.010.

Rosenberg, Karen. “Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources.” In ​Writing

Spaces: Readings on Writing​, 2:210–20. Parlor Press, 2011.